Sometime around the early 1990s, Doug French was a cab driver in Grand Rapids. On one of his many drives, he got to talking with his passengers.
"They asked me if I wanted to come in and see it and so I did."
What he saw still lingers in his memory.
“They brought me in the garage and there was, I remember, right there was a like a stagecoach lift for like changing wheels, harnesses, winches, things like that.”
They told Doug the mid-19th-century home used to be a stagecoach stop, where passengers and drivers could rest, eat, and make repairs. All these years later, Doug was curious to know if it still stood.
An old home, on an even older road
Eventually we identified the house on an unassuming road in Byron Center, a community south of Grand Rapids. Doug lives in Florida now, so I went to see the house on my own. The building makes an impression, with its wraparound porch and gable roofing.
Liz and Chad Pierce are the current owners. The house has been remodeled since Doug visited, and the garage he saw doesn’t exist anymore. Liz Pierce said she believes it sat where the kitchen does today. What better place to have our conversation?
To learn more about the building's history, Grand Rapids historian Stephen Staggs joined us at the table. As he relayed the area's history, he began in 10 B.C. Why? Well, it turns out the road the house sits on, South Division Avenue, is older than you might think.
According to Staggs, it started as a Native American trade route.
"There is copper from from Isle Royale that was coming down here. There was mica and seashells from the Atlantic seaboard. There was trade items coming from the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains to this area," Staggs said.
"This long-distance trade that was occurring in and around this area already way back then, we're talking the time of the ancient Roman Republic and the Empire."
It was so useful that when colonizers took the land, they used it too.
“Engineers to this day find it remarkable how Native Americans found the higher ground to get between places. It's an engineering marvel that they're finding it. And so, 'let's build the plank road there.'”
A summer home
The plank road was a mid-19th century wooden toll road — once a major connection between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. The home was built by a lumber baron named James Milford Lane in 1863.
“This was his second home by the way. This was his summer retreat,” Staggs said.
But that’s where things get complicated.
“There are no written records according to the Byron Center Historical Museum and the Grand Rapids Historical Museum from the period in which people say it was a stagecoach stop, that it was indeed a stagecoach stop,” Staggs explained.
He said that this idea appears later, in secondary sources like newspapers. And that garage where question-asker Doug French saw historical coach-related items is gone. So, it’s certainly possible that stagecoaches stopped here, there just isn’t much first hand evidence.
Homeowner Liz Pierce said, in her understanding, it was informal stop.
“They would allow people to stop here and rest their horses and most people were not invited into the home, except for people who were amongst the more wealthy or famous.”
Staggs added some insight into the rare few who may have stayed the night.
“According to the Byron Historical Museum and the accounts they've put together apparently, it's been said that Louisa May Alcott and Jesse James were guests in this home.”
The author of “Little Women” and the infamous outlaw, respectively.
But again, Staggs said there’s no proof, meaning we can only confidently say that the building was once the summer home of a wealthy Grand Rapids man. But that’s not where the building’s history stops.
The House of Dark Shadows
In the basement, Liz showed us the remnants of the home’s other past. Faded squiggly black lines cover the walls, a crude imitation of cobblestone. Liz said the basement used to be a fake jail cell, when the building was a haunted house in the 1970s. And according to her, this is what her home is mostly remembered for by many local residents.
“If someone asks me where I live and I start describing it, I'm like, "Did you grow up in the area?" And if they say yes, I'm like, "You know Mr. Jim's Old Haunted House?" And they're like, "Yeah!” I'm like, “That's where I live."
It was called "The House of Dark Shadows," owned by a man named Jim Westra. Liz said the Haunted House's true purpose was to fuel Westra's other passion.
"He had a love of nature. He had a love of animals and exotic plants and my belief is he created the haunted house as a means to fund all of that."
Some of these animals and plants were kept in the house, with Westra also operating a pet store called "Mr. Jim's Animal Kingdom."
But these many uses of the home would bring Westra into conflict with local leadership.
"He did have some run-ins with the township because of the haunted house. The township did not like the haunted house, nor did they like some of the people that would be here as a refugee," Chad Pierce said.
Those "refugees" were often members of the LGBTQ+ community, who were allowed to stay in the home in exchange for working at the haunted house, according to the Pierces.
They added that this arrangement would give the building another nickname, "The Refuge."
Westra eventually left the area, setting up another haunted house attraction in Greenville called the "Haunted Mill."
Then his story took a dark turn. According to MLive, Westra was arrested in 2003 for allegedly commissioning the arson of the mill and a mobile home. He was convicted of arson in 2009 and died in prison the next year at age 80. In an MLive article about Westra's death, his brother Eugene claimed Jim was innocent of the crimes. He suggested Jim should be remembered for the compassion Eugene said he showed toward people and animals.
I told our question-asker Doug French about what I’d learned. He was impressed that we made it back to 10 B.C.
“The Grand Rapids we know has only been around for a couple hundred years. That area in Michigan has been developed for much, much longer than that. And I find that really interesting.”
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
